Friday, January 27, 2006

Memoirs of a life story.

With all of the recent controversy surrounding the veracity of memoirs, I have started to wonder whether blogs professing to share true anecdotes about the authors' lives are properly deemed memoirs. A memoir is not necessarily an autobiography, as my astute cousin pointed out today. So, might you ask, what exactly is a memoir?

Well, Webster's definitions are: 1 : an official note or report : MEMORANDUM; 2 a : a narrative composed from personal experience b :AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- usually used in plural c : BIOGRAPHY;and 3 a : an account of something noteworthy : REPORT b plural : the record of the proceedings of a learned society.

So, a memoir could be an autobiography, but I think the more commonly accepted usage of the word indicates an understanding that it is more an account of something noteworthy. What Oprah didn't quite understand when she was berating him on national television, is that the account of something noteworthy that Frey sought fit to put in book form, were largely events that took place in his mind. They were absolutely noteworthy events -- they just didn't necessarily happen in the physical realm. It's like those jokers who try to tell me Santa isn't real. Well, if I were to pen a memoir, I'd include my experiences with Santa. Why? Easy -- because I've encountered him dozens of times, and it will forever remain my secret whether that was in the physical world, or the world that exists only in the mind.

1 comment:

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